TY - JOUR
T1 - Promoting evaluation in youth character development through enhanced Evaluation Capacity Building
T2 - Empirical findings from the PACE Project
AU - Chauveron, Lisa M.
AU - Urban, Jennifer Brown
AU - Samtani, Satabdi
AU - Cox, Milira
AU - Moorman, Leslie
AU - Hargraves, Monica
AU - Buckley, Jane
AU - Linver, Miriam
N1 - Funding Information:
This work supported in part by the John Templeton Foundation, grant #60483.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC.
PY - 2021/3/1
Y1 - 2021/3/1
N2 - In this paper, we present empirical findings from a mixed-methods study of an Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB) initiative called the Partnerships for Advancing Character program Evaluation (PACE) Project that applied the Relational Systems Evaluation (RSE) approach. We focused especially on how participation in this partnership-based ECB program is associated with changes in attitudes and behaviors related to evaluation capacity and Evaluative Thinking. We used a repeated measures design with semi-structured interviews and surveys to examine two research questions: (1) Do Program Professionals participating in PACE adopt Evaluative Thinking behaviors? And (2) Do Program Professionals participating in PACE demonstrate increased evaluation capacity, including improved attitudes about evaluation? We found that PACE successfully increased Program Professional's behaviors, attitudes, and capacity; in particular, participants overwhelmingly noted that the emphasis on Evaluative Thinking changed the way they think about and approach evaluation, such that evaluation is now more well-integrated into their practice.
AB - In this paper, we present empirical findings from a mixed-methods study of an Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB) initiative called the Partnerships for Advancing Character program Evaluation (PACE) Project that applied the Relational Systems Evaluation (RSE) approach. We focused especially on how participation in this partnership-based ECB program is associated with changes in attitudes and behaviors related to evaluation capacity and Evaluative Thinking. We used a repeated measures design with semi-structured interviews and surveys to examine two research questions: (1) Do Program Professionals participating in PACE adopt Evaluative Thinking behaviors? And (2) Do Program Professionals participating in PACE demonstrate increased evaluation capacity, including improved attitudes about evaluation? We found that PACE successfully increased Program Professional's behaviors, attitudes, and capacity; in particular, participants overwhelmingly noted that the emphasis on Evaluative Thinking changed the way they think about and approach evaluation, such that evaluation is now more well-integrated into their practice.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85104844050&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/ev.20447
DO - 10.1002/ev.20447
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85104844050
SN - 1097-6736
VL - 2021
SP - 79
EP - 95
JO - New Directions for Evaluation
JF - New Directions for Evaluation
IS - 169
ER -